The Way My World Caves
by CokeBottleK
Summary: It's late afternoon in the middle of September, and Lily Evans and James Potter are fighting outside in a thunderstorm. L/J. One-shot, songfic.


**DISCLAIMER: Setting, characters, yadda yadda – JKR. Song lyrics – Kelly Clarkson. Cover art – viria13. I strung the words together but that's about it.**

_I was running through some K. Clark and I stumbled back into "Beautiful Disaster" and was promptly walloped over the head and in the gut, my shins and the back of my knees, with all the feels. So this my first attempt at something like a songfic, I guess? For the record, I did a read-through with and without the song playing, and I suggest you play the song during; it's much more with the feels if you do._

_Read, review, and enjoy the excess of italicized words (because I did it on purpose and it sets the mood)! ;D –K._

* * *

**The Way My World Caves**

_He drowns in his dreams  
An exquisite extreme, I know  
He's as damned as he seems  
And more heaven than a heart could hold  
And if I try to save him  
My whole world could cave in  
It just ain't right…_

It's raining. It's late afternoon in the middle of September and the sky is black black black, drowning in clouds that are coming apart in sheets of rain that are flooding the grounds that slosh with water and mud as James Potter splatters his furious way through and Lily Evans slips and slides and nearly upsets herself in her haste to catch up with him.

"James!" she shouts over the rain and the boom of thunder, thinking that this is the most ridiculous absurd thing she's ever done but she has to do it because he's being _stupid_, so stupid. "James, would you just wait?"

"What for?" James shouts back, not bothering to turn around because he feels like he might actually cry if he looks at her and he _can't_. "Why are you even following me?"

Lily is soaked and freezing and her hair is plastered to her skin and her face is tinged bright pink and she wants to _hit him_, she wants to hit him so hard but he's walking too fast and she hates watching him walk away from her like that. It _hurts_ but she's still angry because she can't deal with how stupid he's being. She hadn't wanted Aubrey to kiss her and she didn't kiss him back, James would know that if he hadn't turned around so quickly and stormed off and left her to chase him all the way back to Hogwarts like this.

"I'm following you because you're an idiot!" she says hotly, her voice carrying on the howl of the wind. "If you'd just stop for five minutes and let me explain –"

"There's nothing to explain. You don't owe me anything." James swears he can feel his heart break at how true those words are. She _doesn't_ owe him anything and he has no reason to be this angry with her but he is because he doesn't know what else to do. If Aubrey kissed her – and he did, James saw it, right in the middle of the High Street – then she was at perfect liberty to kiss him right back no matter how wrong it is because she's not _supposed_ to be kissing Aubrey, she's supposed to be kissing _him_. And James has to keep walking because he just can't look at her because for _fuck's sake_, it's been how many years and he still doesn't have a shot, he doesn't have a hope in hell and oh, if this isn't hell, he doesn't know what is.

Lily is getting desperate and she doesn't know what else to say to him if he keeps walking away like he is now. It's cold and it's raining and she just wants to make him understand but she can't even make him _look_ at her. So now she's desperate for something, _anything_ to make him stop and turn around, so she can explain or maybe deck him or something, it doesn't matter, and words are falling out of her mouth again.

_Oh, and I don't know  
I don't know what he's after  
But he's so beautiful  
Such a beautiful disaster  
And if I could hold on  
Through the tears and the laughter  
Would it be beautiful?  
Or just a beautiful disaster?_

"James, _please_, just tell me –" the words are falling and she doesn't know where they're going but it's all so hopeless and desperate so it doesn't matter, anyway – "what do you want from me?"

That makes him stop. He doesn't know if it's the words or the way she says them, but he stops. His heart thunders in his chest and it hurts to breathe but he stops and he turns around and he splashes his way towards her and he wants to shake her but he doesn't want to hurt her, God, all he's ever wanted was her but how is he supposed to tell her that now?

He looks at her pink-tinged face that he knows is so pale underneath, that crimson hair that's so much darker in the rain, those over-bright eyes, and he can't tell her, he just can't, but it's coming out of his mouth, anyway.

"Do I really have to tell you?" he demands and he swears at himself for sounding so angry. But he _is_ angry and he's hurt and this _sucks_. "You really don't know?"

_He's magic and myth  
As strong as what I believe  
A tragedy with  
More damage than a soul should see  
And do I try to change him?  
So hard not to blame him  
Hold on tight…_

Lily looks up at him and his eyes are hard and something behind them is shattered and she _knows_ – she knows what he wants from her and she wants to give it to him but first he's got to stop being so bloody stupid all the time. So instead of answering his question, she asks one of her own and it's just as angry and shattered and stubborn because you know what, they're both big stupid pieces of the same jigsaw puzzle that are supposed to fit but one of them is too busy being lost all the time. But she's angry and she doesn't care so she spits fire right back at him.

"What is _wrong_ with you?"

James blinks behind his rain-streaked specs because that's not what he'd expected her to say. He didn't know what he expected, really, but it wasn't this. What was she so angry about? What right did she have? _She_ was the one who kept doing stupid things to _his_ heart and _he_ was the one who couldn't take it anymore.

"Me?" he says. "What's wrong with _you_? You're the one who hates me one year, the one who's my best bloody friend the next, the one who laughs at my jokes and makes me want to be a better person and you're still the one who's – who's smashing my heart to bits and you don't even _realize_ it!"

_Oh, 'cause I don't know  
I don't know what he's after  
But he's so beautiful  
Such a beautiful disaster  
And if I could hold on  
Through the tears and the laughter  
Would it be beautiful?  
Or just a beautiful disaster?_

"I didn't mean to!" Lily tells him and her voice breaks on something like a sob that echoes so painfully on the rain-soaked wind. She doesn't know what else to say because she didn't mean to and really it wasn't her fault. "But if you had just stayed put for three seconds, you would have seen that I didn't kiss him back, all right? You would have seen it but instead you got angry at me, and that's not fair, James, because _it's not my fault_."

James feels a flutter in his chest and he thinks it's relief but he doesn't have time to assess it because Lily's still talking and there's something hysterical about it. Some part of him is still angry and he doesn't know why but he thinks it might be because she's crying now and it's his fault. He's not supposed to make her cry.

"I'm sorry and I don't know why I'm bothering to apologize because it's not like I wanted him to kiss me," she's saying, stumbling over her words because she's angry too but she still wants him to _get it_. "So I shoved him off and told him to piss off and then I came running after you but bloody hell, you're fast and you're stubborn and you're such a stupid tosser sometimes –"

_I'm longing for love and the logical  
But he's only happy hysterical  
I'm waiting for some kind of miracle  
Waited so long, so long…_

"If I'm so stupid, then why'd you run after me?" James wants to know. She might as well have said it but he wants to hear it because he's waited forever and he _needs_ it, or else these hysterical butterflies that are fluttering like ecstasy in his heart and in his veins are never ever going to escape and he's sure to be sick on them if they don't find a release.

Lily looks up at him through her frustrated tears and the sheets of rain and he's all a blur of splotchy colors – black and white and red – and she's annoyed and scared and exasperated and she repeats his words from that oh-so-terrifying moment ago, "Do I really have to tell you?"

James nods, and Lily repeats more words.

"You really don't know?"

"Oh, I know," James assures her, and his voice cuts a shaky but warm trail through the rain to dance across her lips that's so much softer than the insistent push and swirl of the wind around them. "But I need you to say it out loud or else –"

"Because I'll always come after you," Lily cuts across his _what else_ because something like those words have been hanging on the tip of her tongue for what feels like forever now and if he's going to ask her, then she's going to tell him. "Because I _don't_ hate you and you're my best bloody friend who makes me laugh and you make _me_ want to be better, to stand up to whatever fantasies you've got of me even though I'll tell you, you're in for a rude awakening. But if you still want to do this then I want to do it too because it's completely mad but I'm half in love with you already and –"

But James doesn't find out what comes after _and_ because now he's kissing her because _he's_ the one who's supposed to and it's just about bloody time.

_He's soft to the touch  
But frayed at the end, he breaks  
He's never enough  
And still he's more than I can take…_

His hand moves to grip the side of her neck, his fingertips tracing erratic patterns over the skin behind her ear and her arms fling around his neck and she's dragging him closer. The rain is pounding, thunder rolling across the clouds, forks of lightening illuminating the sky and the grounds in one two three bursts of crazy white-gold light. But they don't care and they don't notice and James's free arm is around Lily's waist and their wet clothes are clinging as much as their rain-dampened lips. Their mingled breath is the only warmth out in the cold September rain and they're kissing hard and fast and they're so close to shaking shattering breaking because _this_ is right and _this_ is supposed to and _this_ is so much better than shouting at each other through the storm. Because they're both more, so much more than the other anticipated, but it's the exact right kind of more and they're collapsing under this joyous weight of hands and arms and lips and teeth and tongue, under the inexplicable _rightness_ of Lily and James in the late afternoon in the middle of a thunderstorm.

_Oh, 'cause I don't know  
I don't know what he's after  
But he's so beautiful  
Such a beautiful disaster  
And if I could hold on  
Through the tears and the laughter  
Would it be beautiful?  
Or just a beautiful disaster?_

It's still raining and they pull apart, just enough to be a ragged breath away and James is still holding onto her and Lily is still holding onto him and there is absolutely no indication that either of them is ever letting go because _that_ would be wrong and they don't want to be wrong anymore.

"That's what you wanted from me, yeah?" Lily asks after a moment. She's cold and she's drenched but she can't bring herself to care anymore because her breath is short and her knees are shaking and something in her heart is caving swooning fainting.

Both of James's hands are holding her face now and it's all wet skin on wet skin and everything smells like an autumn storm and his lips are brushing hers again and right before – _right before_ he takes them again, he tells her on a whisper that carries over the wet and wild wind:

"I've only ever wanted you."

_He's beautiful  
Such a beautiful disaster…  
_


End file.
